Zhu, Li Jan. 2006 Email: Li.Zhu.## email not listed ##
Who interracially cohabits? An exploratory study on interracial
cohabitation between Asian Americans and Whites
While interracial marriage has been long viewed as an indictor of social and
geographic distance between racial groups, interracial cohabitation, as another important type
of interracial relationships, nevertheless has attracted little attention in the past few years. One
possible explanation for this gap is the lack of relevant and reliable data available in the past
for scholars and researchers to explore this undiscovered field. Like interracial marriage,
interracial cohabitation is also a crucial indictor of social barriers between racial groups
(Joyner & Kao, 2005). Furthermore, the fact that cohabitation has risen dramatically in the
past few decades in the United States strongly suggests that failure to incorporate interracial
cohabitation into the study of interracial intimate relationships will lead to an incomplete
understanding of this issue. Finally, as one of the fastest growing racial groups in this country,
an increasing number of Asian Americans are marrying with whites, which indicates a
diminishing social distance to the mainstream society. However, there exist few studies on the
interracial cohabitation specifically focusing on Asian Americans. In the hopes of filling this
gap, the current study will first reexamine among whites, blacks, Asian Americans, and
Hispanics who are more likely to interracially cohabit and then explore what individual-level
factors will influence the likelihood of interracial cohabitation between whites and minority
people, especially for Asian Americans in the United States.
Background and theoretical framework
Dept. of Soc., Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287
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